Silent Tribute
by DESPERAD0
Summary: Your tears is the highest tribute you can pay me. A Taichi & Yamato friendship story.


**A/N:** First Digimon story I wrote, also my first "sad" story that I wrote. I apologize if it's not very good, I had to try out a few things here and there. Note that this is **not** a yaoi, but a friendship fic between Yamato and Taichi. I find their relationship so astounding, I couldn't resist.

**Disclaimer:** Tai, Matt, Jamie, Landon, A Walk to Remember: all not mine (hard to believe eh o.0)

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**Silent Tribute**

Matt stood there numbly in the dreary afternoon rain. The clouds rolled over in a blanket of grey, frowning at the world below. Matt ignored the biting winds cutting at his smooth pale cheeks. His black umbrella was propped on his shoulder, sheltering him from the rain and the noise around him. Not that there was much noise, it was a cemetery and whoever that was there is doing what he is doing: silently reflecting. He was confined into his own little world. He ignored the cars sloshing through the rainy streets. The rhythm of rainfall upon his umbrella encouraged his train of thought.

Matt ran his hands through his perfect blonde hair, putting each strand out of it's perfect place. He didn't care anymore. His deep crimson shirt was neatly buttoned but hung messily outside his black slacks. His cerulean eyes glazed over as he looked on the gravestone. He knelt down on the wet grass, not caring that it made his tailored slacks dirty, and softly touch the letters embossed on the stone.

**Taichi Yagami.  
****1977-2001**

He willed himself not to cry. Taichi wouldn't have want him to cry. "Why be sad when you can be happy?" was what he always told him when Matt was in an angst mood. _Taichi_. He was always there to just put that reassuring hand on the shoulder. Taichi was never one to say the right things at the right time, but what matters was that he was always _there_.

Matt's eyes glossed over, his vision blurring a bit, but no tears fell. There was so much he wanted to say to him before he died. His time shouldn't have come, he was too young. Taichi had a list of goals he wanted to accomplish, quite ambitious, but he never got to finish his job.

Matt thought of all the different possibilities that this sad story could have. If only he went and met up with Taichi like he promised instead of blowing him off the last minute.

Matt licked his dried lips from the freezing wind. He laid down a camellia and two mature-bloomed roses, it's deep pink petals fluttered brightly against the dark grey gravestone. One hand still on his umbrella, he moved his lips over each letter he traced. _Taichi_. If only he agreed to wait at the park like Taichi had suggested. But no, he said that "the bank is a safer place, where it's less solitude with more people around." The dramatic irony was unbearable.

Damn them all. How can innocent people, who have done nothing outrageously sinful be killed in a second's breath, while the terrorists and robbers out there get away with it? He did not deserve to die, Matt thought angrily, thumping his fist at the gravestone. Several crows flew away.

Matt looked around the wet grey cemetery. The world was quiet here. The grass was a lush wet color, flowers drooped in their wrappings as the rain drowned them. Too much water can be a bad thing, Matt thought darkly. The world owed him. God sent him a best friend and then takes him away 10 years after. It must be a cruel sick way of punishment. He coughed, puffing little clouds of cold air.

If only he didn't agree to work that extra half an hour shift, and things would've turned out alright.

Matt put one hand in his pocket and drew out a wrinkled piece of paper. It's crinkled state had shown that it had been read many and many times. The piece of paper was ripped off from the clipboard at a hospital. The big messy writing was barely legible. Matt set his eyes on the top of the paper for…he lost count…the umpteenth time. "_Dear Matt_." Matt let out a slow long breath before starting to read it. Drops of rain peered in from his umbrella, landing uninvited, smudging the blue ink.

"…_when a thought struck me: I'm not going to have much of a chance to live."_

Matt recalled the day it happened. There was blood everywhere when he arrived at the bank. It was like some bad crime scene investigation movie, where the dead person was outlined in chalk. He desperately tried looking for an outline with big bushy hair but there was none. Instead there was a pool of blood. Someone had shot Tai.

Matt blinked and tried to refocus his eyes. Things were getting blurry again. He stood up to stretch his knees. The sky was still raining, not more and not less, but at a continuous steady rate. Matt gripped his umbrella. The world owed him a best friend.

"_I know you thought the list idea was stupid"_

A bitter chuckle slipped through his mouth. Tai had no idea. The day he went home he started writing down a list of all the things he wanted to do, wanted to experience. He never shared his list with anyone, not even with Tai. Matt would just smile when Tai goes on every time he did something on his list, like the belly ring incident, but would never hint that he had any list of his own.

_Lighten up, you're always so angsty."_

How could he not? His life was in shades of grey. He never had a mother-figure around his teenage years. His dad was loving (in his own gruff way) but was always working. The only person that hung around his empty apartment was Tai. He was unaware that he had become dependant on Tai to ease his loneliness. When Tai got married, he reassured Matt that nothing was going to change between them. He won't abandon him just because he got married. Matt smiled weakly.

The rain splattered a few more drops on his precious letter.

"_That's what I wanted, to enter someone's life and change it for the good and that me and him could be best friends, even better than soul mates." _

Matt furrowed his eyebrows as he stopped reading the letter and look up towards the sky. All he saw was an expanse of grey and droplets falling onto his eyelid. He finally understood what Tai meant. He bent down again, kneeling on that same patch of grass and touched the gravestone. It was wet from the rain. The rain had stopped a little, it was only a shimmer now.

"_thank you for offering your friendship to me."_

Matt endured long hard stares from his friends when he announced he wasn't going to Tai's funeral. He didn't like funerals. People cried at funerals, and it made him feel weak and vulnerable. "It's your last chance to see him." they all say. What good is seeing a dead person? Instead, he visited Tai every month and laid down some flowers for his friend. Matt ignored their stares and whispers as he went to Tai's hospital bed and picked up the folded note that said: **For Matt only.**

"_Your tears is the highest tribute you could ever pay me."_

Matt folded up the letter which was now dotted wet, not only from the rain. He closed his umbrella, took one last look at his friend's grave and walked back home. The deep pink roses and camellia laid there gently on the stone. Flowers of gratitude and thanks for completing the number one on his own list.

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_Dear Matt,_

_Lighten up, you're always so angsty. I bet you're depressed and sad right now. (Well no shit Sherlock, I'm dead…you better be sad) I'm sorry I can't make it to your funeral. (Uh, by the way, that was a joke to try "lightening you up"…did it work? No? Okay.) I was lying here in my hospital bed when a thought struck me: I'm not going to have much of a chance to live. I knew I had to write you this letter, or else I would probably regret while lying in my cold lonely grave. _

_Do you remember the time we watched A Walk to Remember (the time YOU dragged me along…kidding!) and Landon was trying to help Jamie fulfill each item on her list? That reminded me of the relationship you and I had (not romantically…you wish Ishida, you wish!) I know you thought the list idea was stupid, but I went home that night and got out a pen and started jotting down everything I could think of, then I reordered the list by how much I want to do something to how less significant it was for me. _

_Do you know what the first item on my list was? Do you remember how Jamie said "If I told you, then I would have to kill you" when Landon asked her what was #1?" Well since I'm already dead, I guess it's okay for me to tell you what my #1 is. _

_I wanted to change the life of one person, just one, and hit them in a way that he will have memories of me and he so special only they will know. He can laugh and cry, and no one else in the room will know why. That's what I wanted, to enter someone's life and change it for the good and that me and him could be best friends, even better than soul mates._

_I tried completing each item on your non-written list. I know you have a list Ishida, every person does! But I know I didn't do a very good job of fulfilling it. I know I've let you down so many times. Like the time I couldn't get out of bed after you phoned me at 4am and I agreed to go to the park with you. Left you out there in the freezing snow for an entire night…I'm sorry buddy._

_In a way, you sort of did something on my list without realizing it. You did my #1 on the list. Yamato Ishida, do you realize you've changed my life? I mean, besides being best friends and knowing each other's privy secrets. We have so many inside jokes, it seems like that's the normal everyday-language we talk with. No wonder people give us weird looks whenever we talk! _

_Also, who else could be late to their own wedding because their best man was tied up on the couch from the bachelor party? ME! I know these aren't very good examples of showing how much you have changed my life, but man, I'm not one for sap. I'm one for…just being there (you remember how bad I am with giving advice too right?)._

_Thanks for coming to the tattoo parlor to pierce my belly button when no one else would go with me. That was #8 on my list. It must've been annoying watching me whimper in pain then grip your wrist with vice. _

_I didn't get to complete my entire list, but I did do my number one. I finally met this guy and touched his life. This boy was quiet and anti-social. He was broody with a wall built up so 'effin high that it would take an entire army to blow down one stone. Apparently I was that one army. But none of this would happen if you didn't let me in. Thank you for giving me the chance to be your friend. I know I've made a difference because only I see the differences in you, even when no one else sees them. You've shown them to me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you._

_And most of all, thank you for offering your friendship to me. It was more than I could ever ask for._

_Your tears is the highest tribute you could ever pay me. Thank you always._

_Taichi Yagami. _


End file.
